If you were a Christian in the early 2000’s, you probably read Left Behind, and perhaps other books in the bestselling series. If you didn’t read it or watch the movies, or if you came to Jesus a decade or so later, consider yourselves lucky; you probably learned better end times theology than many of us.
It’s sort of like how Millennials and Gen Z should be thankful for missing the era of big hair and Afterschool Specials. Or, how Gen X is grateful that none of our, ahem, extracurricular activities were captured on social media.
The era we grew up in influenced our education, for good or bad, and that includes our understanding of scripture and what we get from our Bible studies. I believe the Lord is priming His Church to unlearn generations of bad teaching, and end times discussions are no exception.
Folks my age got our Biblical end times doctrine from Left Behind. Characters like Nicolae Carpathia, Moshe, and Eli, were portrayed as biblical characters straight from scripture. Concepts like the rapture, rebuilding the Third Temple, and a plague of flying scorpion things were dramatized to make sense of the book of Revelation. And a Kirk Cameron film adaptation was offered to capture the non-bibliophiles in the net.
All of this was interesting fiction, and nothing close to what ancient readers would have fathomed when reading the Revelation that John penned around 67-68 AD, just before the literal stone-for-stone dismantling of the Second Temple1 in Jerusalem, and during the ongoing persecution of Christians under Roman Emperor Nero.
“Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
—Matthew 24:33-34, NIV
Theologically, Left Behind was inaccurate, but being inaccurate never prevents something from being popular. Unfortunately Left Behind derailed an entire generation of (mostly American)2 Jesus followers down a path that is making many of them jumpy every time they turn on the news. We watch with those underlying, false doctrinal presuppositions and we wonder:
Maybe vaccines, biometric scanning, or central bank digital currencies are the mark of the beast?
Maybe [insert celebrity boogyman ] is actually the antichrist?
Surely Daniel’s beasts represent the Russian Bear, the American Eagle, and the Russian Dragon, right?
The problem is, none of that is scriptural, and wouldn’t have been the least bit applicable to John’s audience. We must always remember who these scriptures were written to and by: ancient Israelites and 1st Century Christ followers.
And while all scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17), 21st century Americans who love action movies were not John’s intended audience. Historical and scriptural context is pivotal, and when we study Revelation through that lens, it all begins to make a lot more sense.
Now let me emphasize, end times studies probably aren’t all that important for most of us. We can certainly fulfill our basic mission—leading people to Jesus—without getting lost in the weeds of these cumbersome debates.
Studying Revelation, Daniel, and related books is more of an academic discussion in the grand scheme of everyday ministry. But it is important in shaping our understanding of God in relation to humans, and what He wants us to prioritize locally and internationally, especially if we watch the news (which I pretty much never recommend anymore).
So, if we’re going to discuss end times prophecy at all, we better educate ourselves on what the Bible actually says and means. We can begin by discussing how we got all mixed up in the first place.
Eschatology Gone Wild
Eschatology is a fancy word used by Bible theologians and smart people in your church. You should consider inviting them over for dinner once in a while because the conversations are intriguing, and we don’t get nearly enough of this kind of thing in Sunday sermons.
From the Ancient Greek ἔσχατος (éskhatos) meaning “last” and the suffix -λογία (-logía) “the study of,” it basically means the study of the end of the world, or End Times in popular language.
Many cultures, religions, and religious sects have wildly varying eschatology. The Left Behind series fostered what’s known as a dispensationalist view of Revelation, and we’ll need to define that term too:
Dispensationalism: belief in a system of historical progression, as revealed in the Bible, consisting of a series of stages in God’s self-revelation and plan of salvation. (Oxford English dictionary)
The dispensationalist view of the Bible is that it’s an account of literal events that begin at the beginning (Genesis) and go on till the end, in one long narrative. The book of Revelation being written last, and situated at the end of our printed Bibles, dispensationalists believe that what’s described in Revelation hasn’t happened yet, and won’t happen till the last days, right before Jesus comes back.
If that’s what you’ve been taught, you’re not alone.
It’s what I was taught, and what I told my kids, but then, I wasn’t a Bible scholar; most of us aren’t, we simply repeat what we’re told. I was just a dad working 40 hours a week and trying my best to raise a family who followed Jesus. Joking that Obama might be the antichrist seems moronic in retrospect, but I did it because I didn’t know any better.
Moving forward, let’s know better.
Now, before we start, I should caution that this is merely a simple article that will hopefully spark your interest in learning much more. There are some great teaching series that go much deeper that I’ll link at the end.
[Note: I’ve been joking-but-serious with a nerdy theologian friend that we need to collaborate in writing a lighthearted book about all of this. If you want to help fund that effort, see the Give tab at the end of this article.]
The dispensationalist view has muddied some of the most important revelations John provides us with. We need to wipe the grime off our Biblical windshield if we stand any chance of staying on the straight and narrow path, calibrating ourselves with the Holy Spirit GPS and going where He wants.
Many Antichrists Have Come
Since it seems be a hot topic on Twitter these days (still can’t get used to calling it X), let’s begin with a discussion on Nicolae Carpathia the Antichrist. *Cue ominous music.*
If you look around for what people say about the Antichrist, you’ll get a lot of things like this:
“October 7th was horrible—Gaza looks like a dumpster. In Ezekiel 38 and 39 it talks about nations rising up against Israel, and that’s where the Antichrist will come from. Are they God’s chosen people? I thought there was a new covenant that encompassed all of us—am I wrong about that?”
— Shawn Ryan in discussion with Ruslan KD, 2025
“Over the past month, Thiel has hosted a series of four lectures on the downtown waterfront of San Francisco philosophizing about who the antichrist could be and warning that Armageddon is coming.”
— The Guardian, 2025
I used to wonder who the antichrist was, too. I even joked about it being equally likely that Obama or Trump were the antichrist. As it turns out I may have been right, and also wrong. That’s because the antichrist isn’t a single person—not George Soros, Elon Musk, or anyone else. In fact, you might be surprised to learn this but the term antichrist is only used five times in scripture, all by John, and three of those in the same passage:
“Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.
But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.”
— 1 John 2:18-22
“This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”
— 1 John 4:2-3
“I say this because many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.“
— 2 John 1:7
It should be clear from scripture that the idea of an international political figure taking the world by storm, suffering a deadly head wound and mystically being risen from the dead via black magic isn’t what John was talking about. He was describing a spirit that deceives, and denies the Savior Jesus Christ.
Take a look around and ask yourself who the modern antichrists are, because they are many. And they’ve already got the Mark of the Beast all over themselves.
God’s Mark Vs. the Beast’s Mark
“This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that this law of the Lord is to be on your lips.”
— Exodus 13:9
One of the most-scrutinized concepts in end times theology is the Mark of the Beast. Let’s look at this in Revelation:
“The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.”
— Revelation 13:15-17
That seems pretty specific, and conjures up thoughts of QR codes, digital currency, or scanable UPC tattoos that some future authoritative government will implement. However, the underlining reality is that the Mark of the Beast is always about worship of the beast (Rev 14:9, 14:11, 16:2, 19:20 and 20:4) and it’s never described as something a person is deceived into. Rather, it’s a spiritual heart posture one willingly adopts, something we freely give that reveals who and what we worship, be it an idol, an empire, a national flag, or even a person.
Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
they have eyes, but they do not see.
They have ears, but they do not hear;
they have noses, but they do not smell.
They have hands, but they do not feel;
they have feet, but they do not walk;
they make no sound in their throats.
Those who make them are like them;
so are all who trust in them.
— Psalm 115: 4-8
“They will become like them,” that’s important. Saying,“you have ears, let him hear”…that is essentially that you become like the thing you worship, and you will be blind and deaf to the things of the Spirit if you don’t kind of wake up. What he’s saying is that those who are caught up in the idolatry of the empire can’t discern the things of the Spirit.
Those who serve the beast, those who are worshiping the beast, can’t see and discern the things of the Spirit. It’s a deep entanglement.”
— Dr. Matt Mouzakis
The Mark of the Beast is always about who and what we worship. Our allegiance is already stamped out our foreheads. Is it Jesus, or something else? Take an inventory and decide.
Where To Go From Here
We could spend the next several weeks and a dozen articles digging into every facet of Revelation and the other prophetic books but fortunately there actual Bible scholars who’ve done that already. Please look into them if you’re interested in this subject.
The Left Behind books aren’t the worst things Tim LaHaye ever wrote3 (but they’ve got to be a close second), yet they laid a foundation of confusion about scripture, God’s priorities for the nations, and even about a Christ follower’s authority in the heavenly realms.
Suffice it to say, the scary notions of modern tech devices leading you unwittingly into a soul-trapping pit aren’t grounded in God’s Word. Nor is the idea that a coming apocalypse led by secular nations doing very un-Jesus-like things are harbingers of Jesus’ Second Coming. War, famine, and evil days can always occur and it’s prudent to take precautions but our salvation is secure in Christ. Yes, the enemy can deceive us into worshiping one of many antichrists, but only if we choose to take our eyes off of Him.
Who and what we worship are all that really matters, so who are we worshiping today?
The truth of all scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, is that as long as we give our hearts to Jesus, and nothing else, we need not fear. Period. When we do that, when we stop worrying about fitting the news of the day into our personal doctrinal boxes, we become free to get about the business He actually calls us to: Loving God with all our hearts, and loving our neighbors as ourselves.
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Here is the first in a four-part teaching on Revelation by Expedition 44:
And here is the first episode of a meatier, six-part series covering Revelation line-by-line by Cultivate Relationships:
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Footnotes:
1 The “Wailing Wall” in Jerusalem was not in fact part of the Hebrew Temple. A standing ruin of the actual temple would contradict Jesus’s prophecy: “Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” —Matthew 24:1-2. The structure currently known as the Wailing Wall was actually part of a Roman military barracks in the adjacent Fortress Antonia built by Herod. Dr George Wesley Buchanan has written 3 detailed articles on this very subject, in the UK’s Expository Times.
“The fact is, the present “Wailing Wall” of the Jews was NOT even recognized by any Jews as having any religious value or significance until a Rabbi by the name of Isaac Luria designated it (wrongly) as the former “Western Wall” in the sixteenth century. He ignorantly misjudged the true geography of Jerusalem. He was a mystic religionist, NOT a proper historian or geographer. There was not a single Jewish person in the world who paid any attention whatever to the “Wailing Wall” now revered by Jewish people in Jerusalem until the sixteenth century of our era”—Dr. Ernest L Martin, The Temples That Jerusalem Forgot
2 It never sold well outside the U.S. since most of the rest of the world rejects dispensational eschatology.
3 That distinction may go to The Act of Marriage, which is chock-full of bad marriage and sex advice that the Church is still trying to recover from.